In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. We also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of plum tree which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumsweet XX’.
During 2007 we gathered fruit from several different early maturing red flesh plum trees that were located on our ranch in Le Grand, Calif. The seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “EY RF (OP)”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in our greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of our experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the spring of 2011 the claimed variety was selected by us as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of plum tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproductions were true to the original tree in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is most similar to ‘Plumsweet VI’ interspecific tree (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,687), by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that ripens in the early season and that is a red and green two-tone with freckles in skin color, clingstone in type, firm in texture, juicy, and sweet in flavor, but is distinguished therefrom by being easier to set and by producing fruit that is larger in size and darker red in flesh color.